if you enter free, does it show the swap, as well as your original RAM? If you tried xorgwizard, did it allow trying different resolutions?

If both answers are yes, then unless someone has another solution, I'd try dsl.

Edit: Plus I thought I'd mention that Icpug mentioned he was surprised you're running XP with 96M of ram. Do you have any idea what's causing your windows seizing up? Have you thought of trying xplite?

I am running WinXP on my laptop with 96meg of ram, it is slow and I do want to blow XP off. I had pretty much just installed XP when I saw the hog that it was and immediately started looking at Linux. I can only imagine how slow/bad it would be if I actually tried to do anything with it

I also have XP in my desktop (the one that crashes/freezes at least once/day - twice already today ) and am moving towards blowing it off too. I have to have something to replace it with first though. I guess a broken XP is better than no computer at all. I've flattened and rebuilt my desktop at least twice within the last 12 months and getting really tired of it.

I hate to bag Puppy but I guess I'll take look at dsl like you suggest. Maybe I'll just go buy a Mac.

I just did a search, (for 3025), on dsl forums, and there's at least 2 people that have posted & were using portege 3025's. Luckily neither was posting about graphics probs. Have you tried running the puppy CD on the desktop?

Oh my desktop computer? No, I haven't done that yet. I thought I'd play with my laptop first and I'd rather not muck with my desktop until I have some confidence in what I'm doing. It's messed up enough as it is without me adding to the problem

Try just booting the CD, configure keyboard & graphics. If you don't won't to mess with anything on your hard disk, when you shutdown, it will ask you do you want to create a save file. You can either choose no, or plug in a usbkey & save it to that. Either way, your hard disk is untouched.

I have to admit my head is spinning and I'm completely at a loss of where to go from here. The suggestions of looking at DSL have just confused the issue more.

I hate to admit it but all the reasons I had previously stayed away from Linux appear to be true. As great as Linux sounds, and I commend you all for being able to figure it out and make it work, I just don't know if I can make my way through the muddled waters.

Unless there are any other suggestions, I'll extend my 'thanks', take my leave and maybe pick it up again at a later date (or go buy myself a Mac). It's disappointing after 20 years of being a loyal Windows user that moving away from it is becoming such an ordeal.

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate the time you've taken to help me.
Jacqui

sorry that pup didn't work with your graphics, but I hope you realise the fault lies squarely with the manufacturer of your graphics, for only releasing windows drivers, not with puppy.

I don't understand how my suggestion of trying dsl has thrown you into confusion. I thought it might work with your graphics. All you had to do was burn a DSL CD, boot & try it. If it didn't work, either try posting to dsl forum, or toss in bin.

I apologize if I was misunderstood - I was not laying fault with anything or anyone.

Unfortunately I cannot book from CD and it's all this mucking about (in addition to the instability) that has me wanting to move away from Windows. As I said, maybe sometime in the future when I have the inclination to 'experiment' with hardware/software and the time to 'muck about' I'll look at Linux again.

I'm sorry if you are unable to appreciate the confusion that can be/is caused by the many and varied distributions and the many installation methods of those distributions. You are fortunate in that you have a grasp of it and are 'comfortable' playing with your environment; maybe I'll be there one day.

JacquiG,
Sorry to have tuned out for a while. Dougal has prodded me to review your posts, giving me another idea. I hope you can try it.

I printed your screen capture, which confirms that you probably have 8-bit color depth at 640x480. And that is what your ddcprobe output specifies. This does show that the adapter works in Puppy, just not sufficiently.

Noting your second ddcprobe posting, I see that your adapter is not one of those that are looked for. But Puppy 4.00 should prompt you to press ctrl-c, which you have not confirmed. So this is a new issue that the fix does not handle as well as I intended.

Anyway, let's force Puppy to treat it like the problematic ones it expects, which will require you to choose the resolution and color depth. Boot up into the awful xvesa desktop, then edit /etc/xorgoverrides to append the following line, copied from your ddcprobe output (or /tmp/ddcprobe.txt if present), to be sure it is exact:

Code:

oem: MagicGraph 128XD 42K SVGA BIOS

Save it and reboot, creating a small pup_save file on the hard drive where the frugal install is.

The reboot should stop with an xorgwizard dialog window offering a choice of resolutions; use only the appropriate one (800x600?). A second list should appear for color depth; stick with 16-bit/64K.

Thanks. If this works, I will ask Barry to add the oem line to the official puppy, to avoid giving others the same problem and frustration.
RichardLast edited by rerwin on Mon 14 Jul 2008, 12:46; edited 1 time in total

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